Destination Management Systems Implementation

Factors Affecting Dms Adoption And Success

Despite its promised benefits, both for destination marketing and for the coordination of destinations’ internal stakeholders, there are but a few success cases in DMS implementation (Alford & Clarke, 2009; Sigala, 2013). According to Buhalis and Spada (2000), most of DMS development initiatives have aborted in their initial stages.

Successful DMS development requires a systematic approach to understand key factors supporting its management and implementation from both business and technical perspectives (Wang, 2008). However, previous research has focused on narrow technological issues and often explains DMS failure based on the poor eReadiness of business suppliers or DMOs (Brown, 2004) or on the digital gap between different types of tourism organizations (Egger & Buhalis, 2008). Due to the scarcity and narrow focus of DMS research on factors that determine their success, and considering that DMS are a form of Inter-Organizational Information Systems (IOIS) (Bédard, Louillet, Verner, & Joly, 2008; Sigala, 2013) - “ICT-based systems that enable companies to share information and conduct businesses across organizational boundaries” (Boonstra & de Vries, 2005: 485) -, literature on IOIS may also offer important insights on potential critical success factors of DMS.